


sitting vigil

by Ryah_Ignis



Series: Season 12 Codas [23]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x23 coda, M/M, angst like whoa, but still, considering we know Cas will be back, not really MCD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 12:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11335308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryah_Ignis/pseuds/Ryah_Ignis
Summary: “Dean.  It’s not like that this time.”Sam tries to be gentle about it, but it’s like pulling off a Band-Aid, isn’t it?  The sooner Dean accepts that none of their usual tricks could possibly work this time around, the better.  Chuck and Amara have wandered off on the weirdest family road trip ever.  Crowley and Rowena are both dead.    Heaven wouldn’t help one wayward angel.  There’s nothing on Earth—or above, or below—that can help Cas.  Not this time."Post 12x23, Dean refuses to believe that Cas is gone.





	sitting vigil

“No!”

Dean can’t think straight, so when Sam darts into the house with the potentially murderous Lucifer baby, he doesn’t even turn towards his brother.  Instead, he falls to his knees on the dirt beside Cas, his heart stuttering in his chest.

“Cas.  Cas, please.” Dimly, in the back of his mind, he knows that calling his name over and over again won’t do anything.  But he keeps repeating it anyway. “Please.  Come on.”

He tilts his head back to stare at the sky.  Chuck doesn’t descend on a cloud.  Amara doesn’t step out of the night.  Lucifer’s right—no one is coming.  Not this time.

“No!”

He crumples forward, a marionette with his strings cut.  Collapsing doesn’t make it any easier to breathe.  If anything, it makes the ache in his chest worst, but Dean can’t find the energy to move.  Instead, he gropes for Cas’s hand, blinded by his tears.  When he finds it, he laces his fingers through Cas’s.

“Hey, hey, hey.  It’s gonna be okay.”

With his free hand, he smooths Cas’s hair out of where it’s fallen in his face.  He lets himself stroke through Cas’s hair like he never would have when he—if he was still—

“Just take it easy, all right?  It wasn’t even that bad.”

He pretends that he can’t see the bloodstained white shirt or the singed wings.  He pretends that all he has to do is keep Cas calm until they can get him fixed up.  Dean flips Cas’s trench coat over the wound before he pulls Cas’s limp form into his arms.

“Just a flesh wound.  Remember that movie, Cas?  We watched it when you were laid up.”

He tucks Cas’s head under his chin and presses his nose into Cas’s hair.  He always smells absurdly like rain. 

“Cas, please.  For me.”

No answer.

* * *

The sun has just peeked over the horizon by the time Sam has calmed down enough to try to calm his brother.  Cas is his friend too, Mary is—was?—his mother, and his chest still hurts from the rabbit-fast pounding of his heart as they’d faced down Lucifer yet again.  Sue him.  No matter how many times he has to do it, it’ll always sting.

He can’t go out to comfort Dean and fall apart himself.  So instead he putters around the kitchen, makes a cup of tea with the leaves—actual leaves, he can hardly believe it—that Cas must have bought for Kelly and the baby.

The baby thing.  Whatever.

They’ll cross that bridge when they get to it.

But as dawn finally shows its face, Sam can’t hide in the little house anymore.  So he makes his brother a cup of tea, slings one of the baby blankets over his arm, and heads outside.  Dean hasn’t moved.  He’s still kneeling by Cas’s side, though his jeans must have soaked through with mud a long time ago.

“You need to eat something,” Sam says, because that’s a hell of a lot easier than _I’m sorry you never got to tell him_ , or _he knew_.

Mostly because he’s not sure the second is true.

Sam holds out the cup and he blanket, and for a moment, it’s like Dean can’t even see him.  For a painful few heartbeats—it’s like he’s run a marathon and his chest hasn’t quite recovered—Dean finally nods.  Sam thinks that maybe he’s gone mute again, like he used to when they were kids, but instead he takes the cup.

“Thanks,” he rasps out.  Then, “Did you get one for Cas?”

Sam’s heart plummets. “I—Dean.  No, I didn’t.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “He’ll be cold when he gets back.  You know how it is.”

And the fact that yes, Sam knows how it is, how the cold of death doesn’t want to let go, at least not for the first few hours, as if it thinks it can snatch you back, is just evidence of how ridiculous their lives are.  Were.  At least in Cas’s case.

Sam takes a knee beside him.  His jeans soak through in the morning dew instantly.  He doesn’t know how Dean has been sitting here all night. “Dean.  It’s not like that this time.”

He tries to be gentle about it, but it’s like pulling off a Band-Aid, isn’t it?  The sooner Dean accepts that none of their usual tricks could possibly work this time around, the better.  Chuck and Amara have wandered off on the weirdest family road trip ever.  Crowley and Rowena are both dead.    Heaven wouldn’t help one wayward angel.  There’s nothing on Earth—or above, or below—that can help.  Not this time.

Dean’s glare drives straight through him. “He needs to be comfortable.”

That, at least, they can agree on, so Sam helps him carry Cas back to the house.  He’s not made smaller by death (Cas has seemed smaller for a long time now, crushed by the weight of his own mistakes), but he’s easier to lift than Sam had been expecting.

He decides to try again. “Dean.  What’s gonna bring Cas back this time?”

“He’s Cas,” Dean says slowly, as if explaining it to a particularly dumb pre-schooler. “He always finds a way back.”

Yeah, Sam thinks, but there’s no Naomi pulling the strings this time.  No Chuck waiting in the wings.  No angel living in his brain.  Or, at least, he hopes not.

They settle Cas on the bed that Kelly had been using before she...exploded?  Vanished?  Ascended?  Whatever.  He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping to Sam.  Yet Dean takes careful time arranging each of his limbs so that everything looks as natural as possible.

Sam tries one more time. “Dean.  Did you see the wings?”

Dean’s fingers still on Cas’s cuff. “What?”

“The wings.  On the ground.  Cas’s wings.  We’ve never seen an angel come back from that.”

Dean doesn’t seem like he’s heard, at first.  After a moment, he lets out a shuddering breath. “Cas—”

He holds it together long enough to place a gentle kiss on Cas’s forehead.  Then, he slides to his knees beside the bed, Cas’s hand clutched in his own, despite the fact that his knees must ache from his vigil the night before.  Sam pretends not to notice that he’s crying.

Instead, he backs out of the room to give his brother some time.  He’s gonna need it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Twenty-three codas later, we're done! Thank you all so much for sticking with me over the last almost-year. It's been a wild ride, and I couldn't have possibly kept up the motivation to write without your kudos and comments, so thank you. 
> 
> What's next:  
> -Right in Front of Me, a post-series Destiel and Sam/Eileen curtain fic, which is posting now on Fridays  
> -a summer hiatus sorta crackfic, that could plausibly take place in canon  
> -a Sam/Eileen big or minibang, depending on how long it gets  
> -possible submissions to the SPN Fanfic Submission Thursdays!
> 
> And of course, I'll be back in the fall with more codas for season 13. Follow me at goodfemalecharacters.tumblr.com if you're interested in what I'm up to :)


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